Day 4

Just a couple of residual comments and pictures from day 3. This is hard to write. Day 3 in morning we took a driving tour of the Tsunami zone in Banda. The photos we’re sending really only hint at the scale of the devastation. It was VAST and total, often extending as far as we could see in any direction. This included the center of the city of Banda, which used to have more than a million residents. We began to understand just a little of what it looks like for a city like that to lose a quarter of its inhabitants….almost in an instant. 5 months later we are still seeing it play out in the lives of the surviving residents…..many are still having nightmares, insomnia, increased anxiety, especially as it rains (which is frequent), or when there are aftershocks.

We committed to keeping a “prayer chair” operating for the duration of our clinic – mostly to help insure that we “did no harm” to the patients we are caring for….but also in solidarity with those of you who are holding us up. We ran two clinics today: one in the monring and one in the afternoon. Morning clinic was held in a local government office. Lots of general primary care there. Afternoon clinic was held in the annex of a mosque in Banda; as we shut down the clinic around 7PM (just after the call to prayer), we realized that we were not the only ones praying!

A tour of the devastation in Banda, like the one we took yesterday is an essential element in our ability to provide understanding health care services to the people we are seeing here. Humbling. Sobering. Way out of our comfort zones.